BY EVA LIAO Madlib is a super-mysterious musical magician. He’s involved in a billion different hip-hop projects, and chances are you’ve heard his music. But you wouldn’t know it since he’s so low-key and rarely gives interviews. When speaking to his publicist, she says, “Madlib only does interviews on select months.” Then real nonchalant-like, she’s all, “you’d be lucky to catch him during an ‘on’ month.” It seems it’s all a ploy to keep things simplistic at bay. But the irony is that there’s nothing simplistic about his music. In fact, the story of Madlib is actually a bit complicated […]
WORTH REPEATING: She’s Gotta Have It
As an artist and woman growing up in the West, one of the towers that fell on 9-11 was my view of what it meant to view and create art. After the cascade of news stories that brought front and center how my sisters throughout the world live in what I consider to be oppressive misogynistic cultures, I thought deeply about what it must be like where there is no visual representational art, where women are covered from head to toe and not allowed to be seen let alone depicted in any form, where billboards also have the female entirely […]
DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT: Didn’t Need To See THAT
Eric Draper/White House In the Blue Room of the White House, before the Kennedy Center Honors, from left, the pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher; the movie director Martin Scorsese; the singer Diana Ross; President Bush; the songwriter Brian Wilson; Laura Bush; and the actor and writer Steve Martin. [via NEW YORK TIMES]
10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT M.I.A. AT THE ELECTRIC FACTORY SATURDAY NIGHT
TIGER BOMB: M.I.A., Electric Factory, Last Night CLICK TO ENLARGE Yes, the rumors are true — M.I.A. is absolutely beautiful, both in sparkly skintight spandex and a t-shirt three sizes too large, either standing tall like Shiva the Destroyer or seemingly trying to make a baby with the stack of speakers. Few things fire up a crowd more than opening with “Bamboo Banger.” And seeing as how it’s HER song, it only makes sense that she should open with it, if you think about it. Also, few things are as hard as waiting for the song to kick in after […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
STOPPING THE INSANITY: Teddy Bear Teacher Pardoned By President Of Sudan KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s president on Monday agreed to pardon a British teacher jailed here after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, British politician Lord Nazir Ahmed said. Ahmed and another Muslim representative from Britain’s House of Lords, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Monday at his presidential palace to plead for Gillian Gibbons’ pardon. “The president has told us he has already signed the papers for her pardon,” Ahmed told reporters. Sudanese presidential spokesman Mahzoub Faidul told The Associated Press that […]
HALL MONITOR: Our Unofficial City Council Minutes
TIME CAPSULE: Lucien Blackwell presents proclamation to Maurice Barboza in Council chambers on February 25th, 1988. Also pictured, Anna Verna and young Ben Franklin. Unofficial Minutes of City Council Meeting at 10 a.m. on Thursday November 29, 2007 BY ABIGAIL SHEPHERD, CITY HALL CORRESPONDENT-IN-TRAINING 10:00 Is when the City Council meeting is scheduled to commence, but the Committee on Appropriations meeting being held in Council chambers is running late and seeing as how these guys dole out the dough, nobody has the balls to ask them kindly wrap it up. So we wait…and wait. 10:05 A group of […]
RIP: Evel Knievel 1938-2007
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69. Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills. [via SPORTS ILLUSTRATED]
KILLADELPHIA: One More Dead Since U Went To Bed
DAILY NEWS: A 20-year-old man was fatally shot in broad daylight yesterday in Point Breeze. Homicide Lt. Philip Riehl said Jamar Williams was sitting inside a white van on Dickinson Street near Capitol at 2:47 p.m. when he was shot in the back and abdomen. Williams, of Stanley Street near Dickinson, got out the van and collapsed. He died at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 3:30 p.m. Witnesses said they had not gotten a look at the driver of the vehicle, and it’s unknown what motivated the shooting, Riehl said. According to court records, Williams was arrested […]
SURRENDERED: Man With Bomb Road Flares Takes 2 Hostages At Clinton New Hampshire Campaign Office
UPDATE: Nobody was hurt, and after the man, identified as Leeland Eisenberg of nearby Somersworth, was taken into custody, the police said he had nothing more than road flares taped to his chest. They would not discuss Mr. Eisenberg’s motive or mental state, but said he could face federal as well as state charges once the investigation was complete. [via NEW YORK TIMES/Photo by BRIAN SNYDER for REUTERS] PREVIOUSLY: (CNN) — Two people are being held hostage by an armed man at Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, police said Friday. Emergency crews arrive at the office […]
PAPERBOY: Bowlers, Bugs and Bullets Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN We know how it is: so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up valuable nanoseconds that can now be better spent ‘roughing up the suspect’ over at Suicide Girls or what have you. Every Thursday we pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey caramel center of each edition. Why? Because we like you. ON THE COVER CITY PAPER: […]
SECOND OPINION: Being I’m Not There
BY CARRIE RICKEY INQUIRER FILM CRITIC Much as I admire [the] performances, and much as I respect Haynes’ attempt to create something deeper than the standard movie biopic, I left the theater scratching my head, thinking, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no there there.” It’s an enigmatic movie about an enigma — not unlike a boring song about boredom. Thankfully, Haynes successfully avoids replicating the biopic’s standard arc of struggle/flameout/phoenix rising from ashes, the cliche of every VH-1: Behind the Music episode. While structurally ambitious, his six actors in search of one character — or actors representing different […]
JUNK SCIENCE: The Brussel Sprout Is Your Friend
BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Having diversity in your diet is an often overlooked way to remain healthy. Within each food category lies a cornucopia of nutrient-rich foods. And each one of these foods contains hundreds of unique substances — the good, like antioxidants and phytonutrients, and the not-so-good toxins. By eating a diverse diet, you increase your chance of getting the good and decrease your chance of consuming too much of the bad. Increase eating the good + Decrease eating the bad = Decrease your risk of disease. Prehistoric peoples are thought to have dined on 1,500 different wild […]
THE LINCOLN BITE: Curing Hunger With Just $5
Located near 22nd and South, Ants Pants Café bustles and resonates with strange Australian catchphrases and the whoosh-bang of an overscheduled espresso bar. “Ants Pants” is Aussie vernacular for “the best” or the “it” thing of the moment, which explains why the walls are plastered with street maps of Sydney (co-owner Liz Fleming cut her teeth in the cafes of that city). Tables are a bit scarce on weekends, but for good reason, and take-out orders fly out the door as the morning becomes afternoon. Ants Pants offers an array of traditional café pastries for $2 to $3. A five-dollar […]